


A Count of Four

by theprydonian_archivist



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Angst, Character Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-08
Updated: 2012-09-08
Packaged: 2018-07-15 01:06:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7199225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theprydonian_archivist/pseuds/theprydonian_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story in response to the request: "I know you’ve probably already got the other two drabble requests/prompts, so you can ignore this if you’d like. But, what if the Doctor were able to hear the drums too, if only for a short while? He and the Master could’ve done that mind-meld thing, or it could be something else. Up to you. :D "</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Count of Four

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Versaphile, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Prydonian](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Prydonian). Deciding that it needed to have a more long-term home, I began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2016. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact the e-mail address on [The Prydonian collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/theprydonian/profile).

It had been one thing of course, a few seconds in a trash heap before he’d recoiled in abject horror. The sensation had been as fleeting as it was awful, only a memory of a rhythm that left him shaken. He shuddered at it still, though he only heard for a moment. 

The Master had screamed at him in the beginning, vicious and violent and so much hate he couldn’t hope to reach through. He stood his ground when the Master growled and snapped and tried to chase him off. He could no more leave than… well he wasn’t leaving, whatever else. 

Finally, the Master pleaded with him, a rare moment of honesty amidst all the rest. Fury gave way to such obvious agony and all his demands bled away to no more than pitiful, pained begging. The Master shivered where he crouched in the console room of the TARDIS, imploring that for once after all this time, the Doctor finally listen. 

The knowing was the worst part, the recognition that he’d done this before, and in just a few moments it had left him so bruised. To go back was torture, but he stooped anyway, cupping the Master’s face in his hands. They came together and the TARDIS faded. What was left it its wake was dark and bleak, a terrible noise, an awful parody of hearts beating that drowned out all the rest. 

A beat of four rattled him in lethal shouts and insidious whispers until the sound had crept right into his veins. Somewhere, he was aware the Master clung to his shirt front, but mostly there was just the noise, already aching in his head. He stayed beyond anything sensible, and then longer still, because he could not take away the pain and ruin and madness, but he could suffer with, just for a little while. 

They were lost somewhere, and at first he thought it was an abandoned place the Master had drawn up in his head. All rubble and ash, the buildings were crumbling, the streets covered in dust. In the distance he could hear it, the echo of drums like cannon balls against the already battered walls, and realization seeped in like rot in his belly. This was not a city abandoned, but a city under siege, the two of them its only survivors. 

He might have stayed there hours for the way it weighed on him, a nightmare of shattered stone and war drums. He ran the streets beneath the rain of fire and rubble, always with that sound at his back, all but breathing down his neck. It was no wonder the Master had been driven mad with it, the way it battered at everything in its path. 

He escaped of course, worse for wear, but reasonably whole. The Master was quiet, looking through more than at him, a dead weight against the console room wall. His head was still pounding, the cacophony too overwhelming to make out the nuances of the noise. There was sympathy to be had for the Master, atrocities aside. He’d hardly borne them at all and was already reeling. It was a difficult thing to imagine centuries caught up in that sound. 

It wasn’t like the first time around, the drums no more than a phantom memory of something chilling. There was pulling the Master to his feet. There was tea and distraction and the Master still looked wrecked, but for a little while he hadn’t had to be alone with his damage. There was bed too eventually, and through it all, an echo of four, an undercurrent to his every thought. 

His head still hurt, an ache that never really let up. There were no words in the banging, but suggestion curled between the beats, quiet things, just out of his grasp. His mind felt… sticky, as if caught up in someone else’s prison. Maybe he was, after a fashion, a prison of drumming and demands for dominance to the detriment of all else. He wasn’t sure where that thought had come from, the recognition of desire for conquest like his basest need, but it was fleeting, slipped through his fingers before he could curl his hand around it. He’d probably just imagined the whole thing, a leftover silhouette from his not terribly well thought out escapades. Still, it was hours before he’d shaken the thought enough to sleep. 

The Doctor dreamt of things he’d never wanted, of power and purpose when he’d only ever tried to just see the universe. There was possession he yearned for with frightening urgency, though it ran so contrary to what he was. All of time and space were his and even as he recoiled in horror, the sound cradled him. There was something irresistibly fascinating about the whole of the universe bent as he saw fit. 

There was the briefest insistence that was the way it should be. He was brilliant and good and hadn’t he suffered enough? What was one tweak of a timeline, but why stop there? Some saner part of himself railed furiously against that line of thought, but it was muted, as if the drums corralled his morals and inhibitions, barring them away with impossible walls. For just a moment, he gave into that idea, that all of time and space were at his beck and call, and the drums were a symphony, a melody in reward for his ambitions.

He woke gasping, still cold with the possibilities, things he could have been. It had been only a dream of course, all of time wound round his little finger, but he’d wanted. Even as the ambition, the corruption of such a thing repulsed him, he kept cycling back to a faint whisper. To every denial it asked why not, pulling at his reasoning, making all his morals seem insignificant in the face of all that need. 

Of course, of course he knew better. If he stopped to think, pushing past the barrier the drums wove around his saner parts. He remembered Mars, though the relentless banging in his head would have him believe one failure did not mean he hadn’t been right. Time was his to manipulate, because wasn’t he good? Didn’t he always try to so hard to save everyone? Who else was so uniquely qualified, so very clever? Why shouldn’t he use every tool in his arsenal when he always meant so well?

There were moments of weakness where he wondered if there wasn’t some truth to the idea. It left him sick and reeling because he knew better, but the desire remained, an insistent caress in the shadows of his mind. He hated and needed and wanted everything, and he felt so very small there in the middle of his bed. 

He didn’t sleep after that, furious and power starved and terrified by turn. He hadn’t done anything, of course, but the urge was there, that potential for something awful not so far beneath the surface. The Doctor couldn’t be entirely certain where the drums ended and his own darker tendencies began, because he liked to think he was good and kind and noble, but Mars had been entirely on his shoulders. 

Hours passed and the drums began to recede, even if they left him shaken. There was ash in his throat, and everything felt just a few degrees off center. A day of lies and goading and need that ran deep, clawing at his veins, left him worse for wear, but he’d fought off the urge to do anything monumentally stupid. How would he have fared though, if it had been a week, a month… nine centuries of that, choking off what tempered his impulses? Clarity was such a nerve wracking thing. He’d long since forgiven the Master his wrongs, and thought himself merciful. Only now could he even begin to understand.


End file.
